#actually i'm doing IMPORTANT RESEARCH

[black-rose-writings]

I'm a writer who also wants to write Slavic-based fantasy and I do a lot of research. I have read dozens of books about the cultures I want to draw inspiration from (but am not trying to actually talk about those cultures, only inspired by) but I can't go to the countries or speak the languages. What other advice do you have for people who don't want to be LB levels of cultural-trashing?

It really depends on what you specific goal is. "Slavic based fantasy" sounds like "native american based fantasy". Like, are you basing it on a specific culture or period? On a certain group's mythology?

Slavs are not a monolith. Different nations have had vastly different histories and cultural, linguistic and social influences. There is an overlap and a lot of us are at least vaguely familiar with russian folklore and some of the traditions due to recent history (Russia being a big and loud asshole in the latter half of the 20th century). Pick a base inspiration, don't try to do panslavism, it WILL end badly.

Second, and probably most important, get a proofreader/beta/editor who is from the culture you're using as inspiration and is a native speaker of the language (no "my great-grandma was from there, I don't speak the language and have never set foot on the land, so I'm basically the same as person who was born and lived their entire life there" american BS. That's how LB got to where she is (she has russian ashkenazi heritage)). That should help you avoid the worst of the gaffs.

And third and most important, don't be a smug american about it. If you fuck up, you fuck up, shit happens. Have a laugh about it and try not to do it again. Don't be a whiny defensive bitch about it. Yes, it's a fantasy version of whatever culture, but if it sounds stupid/ridiculous/offensive to the culture you're drawing from, you should probably not do that. (Btw, you don't have to be american to be a "smug american" about something.)

[pushing500]

I'm sure it's nothing, but maybe we should take a closer look at it once our basic shelter is finished...

I'm sure Mechi is devastated to have visitors already.

Some of these visitors are very rude, too.

No matter. We'll get the message across if it kills them (especially if it kills them)

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[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i do love how the tumblr nerds care about láeg. i like to think i've played a significant part in making this happen and it's wild to think there are probably more people alive right now who a) know who láeg is and b) care about him than there have been for at least a few centuries, because he has NOT had this level of attention in the past. seriously. i can't stress enough how fleeting most references to láeg are in scholarship from the past 150 years. he does get a look-in in some 19th and 20th century novels but there's no sign that his characterisation there had a massive impact or sparked a lot of attention; he's not in the super late ulster cycle tales so then you're having to go back to the early 18th century and he's barely in coimheasgar na gcuradh; that means toruigheacht gruaidhe griansholus (1679) is the last time anyone really focused on him and given that that only survives in one manuscript i don't think it had a massive impact/audience, etc; so then you're probably going all the way back to the 15th-16th centuries, and remember this is all manuscripts so it's not mass print media, though there's gonna be some oral trads too... it's been a while, is what i'm saying, and the scale of the internet means higher numbers of people can be reached by the same things

tumblr really went "anyway this is our guy now" (of course we did. he's the loyal sarcastic best friend with homoerotic tensions. we were never not going to) and plucked him from obscurity and now people are drawing him!! there has been virtually no art of láeg before!! especially not art outside of illustrating a specific story for the purposes of a retelling!! (he gets drawn sometimes in graphic novels and there are like, two depictions of him and cú chulainn in their chariot, but that's p much it) and people make jokes about him! and know how to spell his name! etc

[raedear]

.

[vulpinesaint]

stayed up too late posting about being aromantic. ah well... life's temporary joys are worth enduring for

[unopenablebox]

i guess it's still technically possible that the person who told me that most of our uni/on leadership are members of the psl was wrong and it's actually only some of them. but also. jesus fucking christ are you kidding me

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

oh hey! here's a fun little poll for all my christian friends to get unnecessarily opinionated about!! :D

[liesonthefloordramatically]

filling out IRB paperwork is truly a layer of hell

[watery-melon-baller]

babygirl i am so fucking nauseous rn

[oceanic-sunsets]

i can't stand twitter nowadays. it's so hard to engage in any meaningful conversation because everything is white and black, and if you dont post about x or y or z you're uneducated and not doing enough (as that same crowd sits, more often than not, comfortably in their home just typing up a post and calling it activism). and most importantly... you should not engage in fights/conversations about a conflict you barely understand, just bc you use social media doesn't mean you HAVE to post about it, especially when you're probably missing important information. it becomes more of a "i'm posting about it because others are, and if i don't, they'll think/say this" instead of genuine care. to establish you are on a higher morality ground. But dont get me wrong, it's a good thing people seem actually interested in what's going on in the world, that's a good thing. It's just the way social media makes people go about it, it often leads nowhere and everyone is posting stuff/having discussions about it for the wrong reasons. social media is as useful as it can be misguiding and counterproductive

[saszor]

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

second way more important edit: How are people seeing this post where I specifically talk about burn survivors being normal, real people, and still tag this as "TW body horror"? Not a single one of these drawings or pictures is a fresh injury. All of them are healed. How the hell would you feel if someone tagged a photo of you as "trigger warning: gore"?

Disabled people are not your fucking body horror. Grow up.

[snommelp]

Always great when you have an encounter with a family member and you come away thinking "okay, yeah, that explains why I'm this particular variety of fucked up"

[yeahdefnot]

Why do i have to write an essayyyy

[arolesbianism]

Was going to do some oni file digging but got too distracted playing the actual video game. Anyways look at her <3

[curlicuecal]

playing science telephone

Hi folks. Let's play a fun game today called "unravelling bad science communication back to its source."

Journey with me.

Saw a comment going around on a tumblr thread that "sometimes the life expectancy of autism is cited in the 30s"

That number seemed..... strange. The commenter DID go on to say that that was "situational on people being awful and not… anything autism actually does", but you know what? Still a strange number. I feel compelled to fact check.

Quick Google "autism life expectancy" pulls up quite a few websites bandying around the number 39. Which is ~technically~ within the 30s, but already higher than the tumblr factoid would suggest. But, guess what. This number still sounds strange to me.

Most of the websites presenting this factoid present themselves as official autism resources and organizations (for parents, etc), and most of them vaguely wave towards "studies."

Ex: "Above And Beyond Therapy" has a whole article on "Does Autism Affect Life Expectancy" and states:

The link implies that it will take you to the "research studies" being referenced, but it in fact takes you to another random autism resource group called.... Songbird Care?

And on that website we find the factoid again:

Ooh, look. Now they've added the word "some". The average lifespan for SOME autistic people. Which the next group erased from the fact. The message shifts further.

And we have slightly more information about the study! (Which has also shifted from "studies" to a singular "study"). And we have another link!

Wonderfully, this link actually takes us to the actual peer-reviewed 2020 study being discussed. [x]

And here, just by reading the abstract, we find the most important information of all.

This study followed a cohort of adolescent and adult autistic people across a 20 year time period. Within that time period, 6.4% of the cohort died. Within that 6.4%, the average age of death was 39 years.

So this number is VERY MUCH not the average age of death for autistic people, or even the average age of death for the cohort of autistic people in that study. It is the average age of death IF you died young and within the 20 year period of the study (n=26), and also we don't even know the average starting age of participants without digging into earlier papers, except that it was 10 or older. (If you're curious, the researchers in the study suggested reduced self-sufficiency to be among the biggest risk factors for the early mortality group.)

But the number in the study has been removed from it's context, gradually modified and spread around the web, and modified some more, until it is pretty much a nonsense number that everyone is citing from everyone else.

There ARE two other numbers that pop up semi-frequently:

One cites the life expectancy at 58. I will leave finding the context for that number as an exercise for the audience, since none of the places I saw it gave a direct citation for where they were getting it.

And then, probably the best and most relevant number floating around out there (and the least frequently cited) draws from a 2023 study of over 17,000 UK people with an autism diagnosis, across 30 years. [x] This study estimated life expectancies between 70 and 77 years, varying with sex and presence/absence of a learning disability. (As compared to the UK 80-83 average for the population as a whole.)

This is a set of numbers that makes way more sense and is backed by way better data, but isn't quite as snappy a soundbite to pass around the internet. I'm gonna pass it around anyway, because I feel bad about how many scared internet people I stumbled across while doing this search.

People on quora like "I'm autistic, can I live past 38"-- honey, YES. omg.

---

tl;dr, when someone gives you a number out of context, consider that the context is probably important

also, make an amateur fact checker's life easier and CITE YOUR SOURCES

[sketchtastrophee]

old art again!! this time a rough animation of sawyer and yarnaby 😎 (looks better if u click to view 😭)

im working on a short ppt animation rn. im thinking i should post it to my youtube channel, though im not sure if people here would see it. i think i can link videos on here?? idk

okay I'm gonna talk abt more chapter 4 stuff.. this time about prototype's previous identity.. ch4 spoilers and also a theory below..

hiding the solo yarnaby under here LOL

people theorized 1006 was elliot, which was recently disproven in the chapter 4 tape where poppy refers to elliot as her dad and wishes he were there. in the same tape she addresses prototype as a completely different person. also recall that elliot died in the 90s, meanwhile prototype met theo in 1989. so yeah, they aren't the same person

I've also seen people say rich is prototype, which cannot be true either. in a ch4 tape he speaks to one of the employees under his supervision. the kid mentions his coworkers joking about him going missing. before the bbi, it would not make sense for this to be a common rumor at the company, which means this tape had to happen after harley was hired in 1990; at a time when the company would have a reason to silence people

prototype existed in 1989 at the minimum, but considering he says "it's always been about you and me" to poppy, he's likely the prototype of HER. she's elliots daughter, she died in the 60s, meaning prototype was probably created around that time as well.

this means that rich can't be the prototype because he was human long after prototype was made

if you want my take on who prototype truly is, i'd say his identity doesn't necessarily matter. i don't mean to say his origins aren't important, just that his name and specific role in the past probably doesn't mean anything in the long run. i've never believed he was elliot or rich, and maybe in the future i'll be proven wrong but for now i'll tell you the theory i've had since june of last year

elliot's daughter dies in the 60s. he divorced his wife in 1930, so his daughter is probably in her 30s when she dies. she gets sick or injured, maybe she's actively dying or already dead by the time elliot begins his research. he looks for ways to bring her back, but it doesn't work on the rats (as he mentioned a note in the 2nd chapter)

so what does he do? he tries it on something bigger as he said he would: a human. of course he's not going to try this experimental method on his own daughter, even if she's already dead, so he finds someone else to use it on. we know that elliot wasn't evil or anything, so it's unlikely he killed anybody to use for the experiment. considering the orphanage isn't open yet (it opened in the 70s, not the 60s), prototype probably wasn't an orphan child either. if i run with my simple version of the theory, elliot may have dug up a body in a graveyard and used that. maybe a fresh one, who knows. he tried it, it worked, then he revived his daughter with the same method.

this is likely what harley wanted to know about in the chapter 3 tape (the "i learn something new about you every day" one), and also what prototype is asking harley to figure out in the ch4 tape they're both in. in that case, sawyer never actually figured out how to revive people with the poppy substance. sure, he can transfer people into the toys, but he can't bring anybody back to life

more reason to believe prototype and poppy are of the same "batch" is because it seems they are the only two who don't need food. it's outright stated about him in the ch1 trailer, and insinuated with her saying the "toys will starve otherwise" when she's talking about how nasty them eating humans is. she refers to them, not herself. her and prototype are probably the only 2 who were ever brought back from the dead, which circles back around to his monologue and gives meaning to the "it's always been about you and me, poppy. what we are". when i heard him say that i felt like my theory was lowk confirmed 😭😭

no guarantee this is right, but it's been my guess for a long time